The latest estimates say that the Assad regime has hundreds of tons of mustard gas, a blister agent, and large stockpiles of sarin and possibly VX, both of which are nerve agents -- all of which can be launched by Scud missiles, artillery, or aircraft, according to Charles Blair, a specialist in chemical and biological weapons at the Federation of American Scientists. "I've heard that Syria has 100 to 200 missiles with nerve agents loaded and ready to go, but that seems extreme," said Blair, noting that the nerve agents are usually stored separately from the weapons and that exact estimates about the size of the regime's stockpile are almost impossible to come by.

Although the U.S. government has released only vague estimates as to the size of Syria's chemical and biological weapons stockpile, Dempsey told lawmakers in March that the arsenal was "100 times the magnitude we experienced in Libya." Libya acceded to the international Chemical Weapons Convention in 2004 and had largely destroyed its useful stockpile of such weapons by the time Qaddafi's regime fell in 2011, according to Blair.

Syria has amassed the world's greatest stockpile of biological, chemical weapons, known as the poor man's atom bomb. It is no wonder that as result of poison gas being used in WWI did the Geneva Conference outlaw the use of gas in warfare. It could also be said that Hitler never used gas in WW2 due to he himself being a victim of poison gas and found it too abhorrent (except for Jews, other undesirables.)

The outlawing of gas as a weapon had little to do with humanitarian concerns and more to do with it being largely impractical a weapon. Poison gas as it was used in the First World War depended entirely on climatic conditions and once it was released was subject to whatever way the wind took it. Used in a mass concentration under favorable conditions it could be somewhat effective however many was the time the stuff ended up causing problems for those using it. Today's never gas agents are much more lethal that their fore runners.

No doubt. Todays chemical are not the kind used in the First World War. My late grandfather served in the Untied States First Gas and Flame regiment in WW1. He was wounded three types by gas and had a portion of one lung removed. Only one wound resulted from German gas, the other two were from his own units stuff that blew back on them.

If Assad is fool enough to use that crap against Israel, Israel would be justified in going full nuclear on the bastards and erasing every city, town and village in that sh!t hole. Sick of dumb inbred a-rabs. Almost as sick of them as I am of dumb demoncraps.

You clearly do not know the Assad regime if you think that he would use them against Israel. Sometimes people are just ignorant about the issues. Israel is by far better off with Assad in power, Israel knows this, Assad knows this, the “insurgents” know this.

After Syria, will come Jordan and possibly Lebanon. What will happen will be the entire Middle east will be extremist sunni islamic political parties in power, all to neuter Iran which is a paper tiger in this case compared to the real threat of militant sunni islam. Israel is wiped off the face of the planet when it will be surrounded by sunni extremists.

A big difference for example can just be viewed in Saudi Arabia and Iran. You can’t practice Judaism in Saudi Arabia, you are not even allowed in the country. While Iran has synagogues, jewish iranians, jewish members of parliament, the largest church in the middle east, christian iranians. They might outlaw conversion but upon comparison i would choose the lesser evil to back. Saudi Arabia and militant Sunnis hate Jewish people, they heavily finance the spreading of islam across the world, building mosques in every country. Iran on the other hand make it clear when they talk about israel, they talk of zionism and the government not jewish people, there is a big difference. I know you will bring up their president talking about wiping them out has been misinterpreted so many times there are thousands of articles talking about it. That is besides the point as muslims always do some chest beating, I mean the guy has scandals where he gets misquoted about wiping them out as a nation and then goes on to say a two state solution would be acceptable.

They both suck but when you have two people you hate, who coincidentally hate each other; you dont help one of them. You keep them both strong, and let them keep fighting against each other.

I know im ranting, but im sick of people misunderstanding the enemy, and cheering for sunni terrorists of the same creed as those who attacked us on 9/11.(not accuse you of cheering them on but in general there has been support on FR for the “insurgents”)

Assad will not attack Israel, not in a million years, this is actually a very funny scenario where iran and israel want the same thing. Its a case of Israel vs Sunni vs Shiite. All three hate each other equally, so the wise thing is not to strengthen the Sunni to the extent where they can neutralize the Shiite threat, only to be left with Israel to deal with. You want a situation where the Sunni and the Shiite offset each other in such a manner that Israel is safe.
If the world wanted Assad gone he would be gone but thankfully there are entities in this world that arent completely retarded, in this case specifically Russia and China(cant believe i agree with them).

Using such weapons today is the death sentence for any nation or army in that the first use of such weapons will bring a massive and more lethal response from a military such as ours. The far more deadlier use of these weapons would be as my late grandfather used to say would be in a city. As he used to say a canister no bigger than a thermos bottle introduced into the ventilation system of a large office building would wreak havoc.

Don’t kid yourself, if Hitler had figured out a way to use gas without getting payback in kind, he’d have used it. He didn’t find anything “abhorrent” unless it was his neck on the line. IOW, a typical sociopath coward.

15
posted on 11/22/2012 5:47:04 PM PST
by Cyber Liberty
(Obama considers the Third World morally superior to the United States.)

Assad will not attack Israel, not in a million years, this is actually a very funny scenario where iran and israel want the same thing. Its a case of Israel vs Sunni vs Shiite. All three hate each other equally, so the wise thing is not to strengthen the Sunni to the extent where they can neutralize the Shiite threat, only to be left with Israel to deal with. You want a situation where the Sunni and the Shiite offset each other in such a manner that Israel is safe.

You are incorrect in your assumption that your reason was the reasoning for gas and chemical agents being outlawed. Read up on it, or go to Belgium on 11th month being November 11th, at the 11th hour, and on the moment of the 11th minute as the crowd utters just under their breath the words, “We will remember” which will rise up and move you like nothing you have experienced and then understand why these weapons were outlawed.

It is true that Hitler himself swore off the use by his military of these weapons, and just for the reason stated that he had been injured; on a side note he won the Iron Cross twice in WWI, and once after being “wounded” by gas and the other for being a courier who succeeded where others had failed to deliver. Hitler’s own experience was enough for him, unfortunately that does not explain his final solution and the use of gas so does leave some questions, but in combat he was the reason the Germans did not use it.

I think not. The emotion generated by a seemingly diabolical weapon no doubt prompted it’s outlawing but the use of gas on the battlefields of the First World War ultimately proved impractical. If they were so worked up over it’s use perhaps they should have taken the step to outlaw war altogether but such a thing is wishful thinking at best. Had they had more of a devastating use they most certainly would have been used in WW2. The use of gas in a sealed chamber proved to be the more effective , as the Germans demonstrated in the concentration camps. Ironically outside of Auschwitz, where Zyclon-B, a prussic acid compound was used , the gas of choice in all the others was carbon monoxide, generated by using the diesel motors of captured Russian submarines. As to the European experience, I don’t know of gas being used against civilians in WW1 as it was in WW2. Two generations of men in my family fought for Europe’s freedom and both barely survived doing so. Thank you but I don’t need to be reminded of wars cost.

‘’Or in a Japanese subway’’.<, Yup. Grand Dad always used to say that in a city in a large building or subway was where gas would be most lethal. He’d say “You don’t need an army. Just one person with a canister’’.

And yet with far less education and money the London and Madrid subway and train attacks killed far more people with plain old explosives, to say nothing of killing even more people with even less money and some box cutters.

Chemical weapons have no business being included in the same category as nuclear and biological weapons as "WMDs"

A real problem with all of these scenarios is why the hell Syria has to launch a thing against Israel?
Current Syrian government is as pro-Israel as possible in that part of the world.
I don’t remember any shouts form Assad about how bad joos are, no big or little satan quotes etc.

A real problem with all of these scenarios is why the hell Syria has to launch a thing against Israel?
Current Syrian government is as pro-Israel as possible in that part of the world.
I don’t remember any shouts form Assad about how bad joos are, no big or little satan quotes etc.

The folks who attacked us on 9/11 have ties to Iran. Furthermore, it is Iran that took out our embassy in Lebanon and the baracks of both the USMC and the French there. It is Iran that is moving Hezbollah operations into the western hemisphere, and it is Iran that is operating in Africa in support of Isamsts there, and the current head of AQ, Egyptian surgeon Zawahiri, has pretty good relations with Iran.

We need to get out of the silly mindet that these groups cannot work together against what they see as their ultimate common enemy.

28 posted on Thu Nov 22 2012 20:42:27 GMT-0600 (Central Standard Time) by Southack: “It is quite likely that Ambassador Stevens was attempting to give that Libyan mustard gas to the Syrian rebels so that Assad would instead get blamed for using it inside Syria.”

One thing I never see discussed is what will happen when the muzzies gain control of the chem weapons if the Assad regime collapses.

Been estimated that it will take about 30,000 NATO troops to control Assad's WMD after the fall of the regime.

Turkey wants missile defense from the US real bad right now.

Syria first acquired Chemical WMD from Egypt. They have used highly intense political skills over the decades to skirt international sanctions. The Muslim brotherhood in Egypt also controls a large chemical WMD stockpile. As do the Saud's and the Iranians.

The liberals told us, repeatedly, and often violently, that there are no WMDs in that area, that W concocted the scheme just to invade a swell country so that he could get lots of oil for his oil buddies.

Gas is only another parameter in the combined armed approach to warfare. It basically slows the enemy troops which now have to don costly and expensive protective equipment... or die in greater number, whichever the calculation dictates.

By itself it is not very effective, just don a mask and cursory protection, in the gas attack is pretty much ineffective. However, as a terror weapon, as a Sarin Tokyo style surprize attack, or combined with a conventional attack, it can level the playing field and add to the confusion and flanking of the enemy.

Much as Napoleon combined infantry, cavalry and artillery into an effective mean, add gas to that combination to complicate things and it works.

38
posted on 11/22/2012 7:46:49 PM PST
by JudgemAll
(Democrats Fed. job-security Whorocracy & hate:hypocrites must be gay like us or be tested/crucified)

Please just research a little about the Europeans aversion to using chemicals and gas, that is the only point. I was not inferring that in Belgium the gas was used against the civilian population, but rather that during WWI there is a town at the front lines that is famous, near the famous Flanders fields. In France there is an area where the Germans gassed the French trenches, and they literally just pushed the earth over the dead, in some places their bayonets still poke upward in testament to the soldiers who were ready to go over the top but did not survive the chorine, which still haunts over the grounds in small clouds, which visitors are cautioned to avoid so as not to be burned - been there and got the t-shirt. That effort you allude, the War to End All Wars, was a noble gesture, however I fear that as long as Old Men send Young Men to Fight there will always be war. It is really too bad that conflict is central to mankind's existence and the history of nations is always a history of war.

Happy Thanksgiving to you too. What still makes large areas of France and Belgium unsafe isn’t ‘’small clouds’’ of gas but unexploded artillery shells. WW1 was a war where artillery dominated the battlefield. Indeed, the machine gun and artillery fire accounted for more casualties than gas in WW1. War is many things, all of them horrible but it remains a dynamic of the human condition. Consider what Heraclitus said”War is the father of all things’’. Or British historian J.F.C. Fuller: “Either war is obsolete or men are’’ pax.

Gas is a weapon when used in the open air is entirely at the whim of which ever way the wind is blowing. As I said my late grandfather was with the US Army's First Gas and Flame regiment in WW1 and was twice wounded when his units own gas blew back over them when the wind shifted. He was wounded only once by German gas. He always said gas would be a more effective weapon when used against a civilian population and always used the example of releasing a large enough canister into the ventilation system of a large office building or hospital. He'd always say “It doesn't take an army. Just one man’’. Personally I think it's the deviousness associated with such an unconventional, if you will ‘’ungentlemanly’’ or cowardly use of gas that makes it so reprehensible(not to mention its physical effects) and would invite massive retaliation against any army who would use it. In the cold calculus of waging war it is those weapon systems that prove to make the most casualties that are favored over those, how ever their potential maybe in theory but in reality don't live up to it that end up being employed.

If I recall, the most important fact that aids the Arabs/pali's is that under Bush (Condi/Powell would NOT sell cluster munitions and it certainly is the case under Obama.

Cluster munitions would make taking out missile sites so much easier and faster. Israel has worked around all this with precision munitions, but targeting a rocket launch site is so much more effective with cluster munitions.

42
posted on 11/23/2012 12:06:14 AM PST
by JSteff
(ALL about SCOTUS tonight. We are DOOMED for a generation or more. Who cares? The Dems care!)

It could also be said that Hitler never used gas in WW2 due to he himself being a victim of poison gas and found it too abhorrent

Actually, he had more pragmatic reasons for not using this -- 1.he suspected the Soviets and Americans and Brits of having chemical weapons as well and if he started, then they would use it as well and no one had effective ways of stopping them2. WWII was a lot more mobile than the trench warfare of WWI -- you drop gas on the enemy and you don't know if in 10 minutes your own troops will be over there, choking.

44
posted on 11/23/2012 1:42:04 AM PST
by Cronos
(**Marriage is about commitment, cohabitation is about convenience.**)

Iran which is a paper tiger in this case compared to the real threat of militant sunni islam. Israel is wiped off the face of the planet when it will be surrounded by sunni extremists.

Exactly. Shia'ism is the milder form in comparison to Sunni'ism or Ibadi'ism.

It accepts "local forms" and tolerates Persian culture

you correctly pointed out that there are synagogues and Churches in Iran but none in Saudia

Saudi Arabia and militant Sunnis hate Jewish people, they heavily finance the spreading of islam across the world, building mosques in every country. Iran on the other hand make it clear when they talk about israel, they talk of zionism and the government not jewish people, there is a big difference. -- exactly. They're still evil, just the lesser evil

48
posted on 11/23/2012 2:25:26 AM PST
by Cronos
(**Marriage is about commitment, cohabitation is about convenience.**)

cook -- read above post from hannibal --> Israel is by far better off with Assad in power, Israel knows this, Assad knows this, the insurgents know this....Assad will not attack Israel, not in a million years, this is actually a very funny scenario where iran and israel want the same thing.

The only guys who would use the chemical weapons would be the Islamic jihadi "Syrian rebels" who are fighting Assad

50
posted on 11/23/2012 2:34:31 AM PST
by Cronos
(**Marriage is about commitment, cohabitation is about convenience.**)

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